People only figured out the mechanics of plate tectonics relatively recently. However, they started noticing that the continents looked like they had fit together as soon as they had accurate maps to look at. In the late 1500's
Abraham Ortelius in his work Thesaurus Geographicus … suggested that the Americas were "torn away from Europe and Africa … by earthquakes and floods" and went on to say: "The vestiges of the rupture reveal themselves, if someone brings forward a map of the world and considers carefully the coasts of the three [continents]."
Exactly!
While the continents might look like they fit together, and the rock types and ages and fossils match at key points all down the coasts from Canada/Scotland all the way down to South America and South Africa, how on earth (sorry) would you explain how the continents are thousands of miles apart?
One theory posited the earth spinning so fast centrifugal forces ripped ehat would become the moon out of the Pacific, sucking Eurasia and America into the void.
That's a Randall Monroe WhatIf if ever I saw one. Think of the energy involved! All life on earth would be extinct.
So these theories were laughed out of scientific court. Until Vine and Matthew's seminal paper on magnetic stripes being mirrored over the mid ocean ridge showed there had to be something forcing the plates apart.
That’s cute honey, would you like an internet.
Alfred Wagner proposed the idea of plate tectonics decades before this, citing the fit of the continents, the same species of plants and animals on continents separated by ocean, and glacial striations as evidence. The problem was that no one knew HOW the plates separated.
He actually described the continents as scraping across an ancient and immobile seafloor. This was deemed mechanically implausible and contributed greatly to the rejection of Continental Drift. If Al stuck with his detailed phenomenological approach, there may have been wider adoption of his detailed and careful observations.
I remember the day I realized that Africa and South America fit together when looking at a paper atlas. It felt like I had just discovered something incredible. I guess I had, but I wasn't the first. :-)
This happens a lot on mathematics, you figure out something that it's looks incredible just to find out Euler already found it centuries ago.
That's why they name things after the second person to discover it - Euler was inevitably the first.
Its always nice when it’s someone other than Euler
Darwin believed one of the more popular explanations of his time: expanding Earth theory. Basically, the planet was like an expanding dough ball. It decently explained why things looked like they fit together. Darwin even went out to Patagonia to investigate some cliffs, and basically "confirmed" the theory.
So Darwin was trying to explain how creatures with common lineage appeared both sides of an ocean. He "proved" that the land masses were once joined. He didn't really care so much about "how" they were joined, but it was vital to his theory of evolution that they were.
Oh, definitely. It's also worth noting that he definitely wasn't a geologist, despite having an interest in it. I was mostly just mentioning it because there were theories trying to explain the similarities across landmasses before plate tectonics. We may not always be right about why, but we're really good at noticing stuff like that (even when it doesn't mean anything).
"yep, that pretty far"
That theory sounds bad, like the opposite problem we’ve currently got. Eventually it’d turn into mad max
I'm really bothered by this line of thinking.
Just because something "looks" like it is a certain way doesn't mean it is. For anything to be considered fact there needs to be evidence. The hypothesis that the Earth may have plate tectonics existed decades before it became fact.
This leads people to make connections between completely unrelated things, despite scientists, or professionals working in fields of science (i.e. doctors), saying, and often proving, there is none.
Sure we are pattern matching machines. We had to be the humans that couldn't figure out "big scary noise usually means big scary threat" died off.
My hat goes off to all the great minds in the sciences that can not only overcome this tendency but using it AT THE SAME TIME!
Consider eprime, english without "is"
Using our understanding of the fundamental elements and atomic particles, we can create weapons capable of destroying the entire earth.
How was earth made though?
Fuck, we don't know. We'll stick with God.
It also took a climatologist or something and nobody believed him. Probably because a lot of science stubbornly gravitated around religious stupidity of some kind.
We call it "authoritarianism".
It's still dominant. Just the authorities have changed.
wasnt it more like 1920s? so "honey take some heroin for your cough from coal mining"
ehhh, the modern inception of the idea was Wegener in the 1910s, but it had no real mechanism for it.
it really wasn't until the 60s that it had been solidified into a single theory with strong evidence behind it and became widely accepted
bro, you dont need to post screenshots of twitter. just steal the post, no one cares.
But 𝕏crements are my favorite genre of meme
that’s why copy pasting is so satisfying. it’s shittyshitshitting all about.
This is a story I am going to repeat forever.
When I was taking one of my science classes for my major our professor mentioned that she is pretty convinced that she was the last holdout geologist for this theory. So not only had this been discovered in recent history it was controversial in recent history.
Makes me wonder what other "obvious things" we don't know yet
That wearing a mask reduces the spread of airborne diseases.
Continental drift had been proposed way before this. The mechanism was unknown.
Me when dabbing on and running circles around the scientists about COVID
Permanently Deleted
This is why when people laugh at me for saying things like trees have concsiousness, and are kinda racist, I dont care. Science needs to catch up to intuition sometimes and Im not good at math so Im not going to be able to prove that tree's have a rudimentary form of cognition and intention.
Anyways, someone else already proved trees make decisions, cant remember where I read it but a big oak will feed baby oaks via root contact, and will feed certain other trees too, but not as much, because it favours its own species.
Biologist here. I promise I’m not laughing at you.
While I’d be a bit cautious about throwing around a word like “consciousness” without defining it, you’re absolutely right. Trees, and pretty much every living thing, are aware of their environment. They’re capable of communication and coordinated responses to threats. They have complex and intricate lifecycles and many levels of interactions with other plants and animals. One of the more profound passages I read (from Jurassic Park, whose author I otherwise detest) had the paleobotanist comment something along the lines that everyone sees plants as a background against which animals act, but they’re their own ecosystem, just as much red in tooth and claw (or cooperative, if you prefer) as any group of dinosaurs.
Being one of those weird theoretical biologists, I’d even let you get away with using a word like “intent” as long as we mean “a learned and stereotyped response to an environmental condition.” Oaks aren’t debating the meaning of life, and they’re not deciding in a sense more meaningful than an “if then else” kind of clause. I mean, I don’t think humans have free will either, so I’m not just ragging on trees here - but that’s a different conversation. They make decisions like “if it’s been warming up for a while and getting sunny, start making leaves again.” It’s genetic/evolutionary learning rather than neural, but it’s still learning. It’s just much slower.
It’s also not racist for oaks to feed other oaks any more than it’s racist for humans to eat corn. Or corn dogs.
I’m not going to get into the differences between group selection versus kin selection dynamics because that would break my New Year’s resolution.
Thank you for your information about your specialty and I found it very interesting. but also thank you for the info about Michael crichton! Your little offhand comment was the first I ever heard and so I searched, had no idea he was vocally against the science supporting global warming. Wild from an author that does scifi based on existing technology/theories and making it a horror thriller with mankind facing the consequences of their hubris.
AKA LIKE FUCKING CLIMATE CHANGE.
Thank you for taking the time to write such an informed response :)
I personaly belive their 'thought proccess' as limited as it is functions via the movement and increase/decrease of hormones. I think this because of how you can make marijuana plants do different things by adjusting their light cycles and ambient temperatures, or just blowing an oscillating fan over them and trimming them a certain way. That is just my uneducated guess
I definetly dont think trees are holding debate forums lol
Do you think bonsais in them little pots get lonely for other trees?
jesus dude. This reads like a LARP, and you missed the previous posts point entirely.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-13-8922-1 ;)
Happy to share the pdf. Quanta also has a bunch of articles on plant "cognition." They are very much living, aware beings.
Another fun fact is that some insects are capable of recognizing human faces. Their vision might actually be way better than ours and they're not all that stupid. It just seems that way because their brains work fundamentally different to ours. Decades of bad science stemming from deeply rooted human supremacism have blinded us to the wonders of the natural world and we're just starting to unravel all of that.
"Trees are assholes" - Randy Hickey
That moment when it sounds like somebody was watching too much Avatar while high on shrooms, but he's actually referencing recent science.
Science needs descriptive language, repeatable experiments and people who enjoy putting them together.
The intersection between that and reality is actually quite miniscule.
I love your username, Dr_Satan
